Hotel cleaner arrested over N500million fraud

The operatives of Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command have arrested a 30-year-old hotel cleaner for defrauding a company of N2 million and attempting to collect another N500 million after hacking into the company's e -mail address.

The suspect, Ahuja Sylvester was on Friday picked up by operatives in 911 Hotel, Warri, Delta State. He had sometime in April, 2017, hacked into the e - mail of a Lagos based company, posing as the Managing Director and instructing the firm's accountant to disburse the sum of N2 million into his Access Bank account.

Using the same approach in June 2017, he again requested the payment of N500 million into a Zenith Bank account. The company detected this and quickly alerted the police who got him arrested.

The RRS Decoy team in their investigations discovered that the initial N2m was withdrawn with a debit card belonging to Ahuja Sylvester.

Ahuja, in his statement to the police denied hacking into the account of any company, stressing that one NYSC member, Emmanuel, was the culprit.

He stated that he met Emmanuel at his work place in April, 2017. According to him: "Emmanuel told me that he was stranded and that somebody was going to send money to him.

He requested that I allow him use my ATM card because he couldnt locate his own and I did. He told me that I should alert him whenever I received credit alert on my phone and I did.

I expected these transactions to have been completed after two days. After almost a week, I saw him and I requested for my ATM, he told me he was still using it. He later told me that he had misplaced it. That was how he didn't return the debit card again and he disappeared.

My salary came and I approached the bank. That was when I was told my account was having issues. This was the moment I got to know my account was used for fraudulent transactions."